“If I were to ask you why you have believed in Christ, why you have become Christians, every man will answer truly, ‘For the sake of happiness.’”[1]
This statement appears at the end of the first chapter in the current edition of Desiring God. The quote intrigued me because from what I’ve read of Augustine, it sounded somewhat too secular or worldly for him to have said. Or to borrow a phrase from C. S. Lewis, I found the statement a little too “thin and ‘tinny’”[2] to be truly Augustine’s words. I thought to myself, “for the sake of happiness”? There’s got to be more to it than that. And so I began to do some research in order to find the source of the quote, since Piper didn’t provide it in his book. What I found was quite interesting, and that’s why I’m writing this blog post.
As I began to research this statement by Augustine, I noticed that this quote is posted all over the internet but most of the time the source is never given! That struck me as odd and made me wonder why? Psychologists call it the “illusion of truth” effect: “Repetition makes a fact seem more true, regardless of whether it is or not.”[3] I’m not saying that anyone was being intentionally deceptive or misleading; it was all done innocently no doubt. But that doesn’t make it true. Also, it’s easy for people to want to believe something so much that they don’t really question things as critically as maybe they should.
So I began looking more into it. The only source I could find for the statement quoted by Piper was from the book by John Burnaby titled Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St. Augustine (London: Hodder, 1938), page 46. Burnaby quotes the same statement that Piper does. However, in contrast to Piper, Burnaby cites the source and goes on to give the statement more context. Notice what he says:
“The preacher, as we know, was speaking for himself. For the young Augustine and the group of friends who had followed him to Milan, ‘the ardent search for truth and wisdom’, which was their common interest, was centered on the question of the happy life;….”[4]
So here we have more of the context, and we find out that it’s not merely the emotion of “happiness” that Augustine is talking about, but more fully he’s talking about “the happy life”—for there can be no true “happiness” apart from “the happy life” found in God Himself!
As I continued to do more research, what I found is that the word “happiness” is really not the best translation of what Augustine really said in Latin. This is pointed out in the entry on “Happiness” in the Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, when it says:
“Despite modern translations that often render the words, ‘beatitudo’ and ‘beatus,’ as ‘happiness’ and ‘happy,’ Augustine generally distinguishes between the concepts of happiness and beatitude. His preferred notion of human goodness is beatitude, which consists in the eternal life granted by God.”[5]
This confirmed my suspicions that Augustine was not talking about “happiness” per se, but rather he was talking about eternal life!
I continued to do more research and I learned something else: Piper’s translation of Augustine (which dates back to at least 1938 and possibly even older) is likely “archaic or faulty, and the scholarship was outdated” say the publishers of The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century.[6] Here’s the statement by Augustine according to the Augustinian Heritage Institute’s The Works of Saint Augustine. Augustine actually says:
“I mean, if I were to ask you why you believe in Christ, why you became Christians, every single one of you answers me truthfully: ‘For the sake of the blessed life.’”[7]
Notice that instead of using the word “happiness” (as in Piper’s translation), Augustine actually says “the blessed life”! These two things may be (indeed they are) related, but who would confuse eternal life with a mere emotion? The two things are plainly not the same. This should be obvious in that “happiness” is an oftentimes transient emotion, feeling, or experience (that even the unsaved claim to have!), while “the blessed life” is much more than that; it is life in all it’s fullness, and that of the best kind: eternal life! Even if we translate the word “blessed” as “happy”, that in no way disproves my point. In other words, “happiness” is still different from “the happy life” in that happiness is only a part of the whole—an important part, but still only a part of the whole. Augustine is talking about “the blessed life”, not merely about the emotion of happiness. This becomes even more clear when his statement about “the blessed life” is read in the context of the entire sermon (Sermon 150, “On the words of the Acts of the Apostles 17:18-34: But some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began debating with him, etc.”). Does Augustine talk about “happiness” in the sermon? By all means yes, but only as a part of “the happy life”: eternal life. Augustine rightly says, “Nobody is really happy, really blessed, except the one who lives forever”.[8] This shows that Augustine is talking about a certain kind of life (eternal life), not merely the emotion of “happiness” as Piper’s quote suggests.
More statements from Augustine’s Sermon 150 are to the same effect, namely, that “the blessed life” is eternal life, not merely the emotion of happiness. Notice what Augustine says at the end of the sermon: he makes the point to say, referring to the Lord Jesus,
“he called life the sort that is both eternal and blessed. So when that rich man asked the Lord, What good must I do, to obtain eternal life?—and he too, of course, by eternal life meant only the blessed life. Because the wicked will have an eternal, but not a blessed life, since it will be filled with torment. So he said, “Lord, what good must I do, to obtain eternal life? The Lord answered him about the commandments. He said, ‘I’ve done all that.’ But when he gave his answer about the commandments, what did he say? If you want to come to life (Mt 19:16-17). He didn’t say ‘blessed life,’ because a wretched one isn’t really to be called life. He didn’t say ‘eternal life,’ because where there is fear of death, it isn’t really to be called life. So there is no life that deserves the name, to be called life, but a blessed life; and there can be no blessed life that is not eternal.”[9]
So here again we see that Augustine is not merely talking about the emotion of “happiness” as in Piper’s quote, but rather Augustine is talking about “the blessed life”—that is, “eternal life”.
Augustine continues:
“This is what everybody wants, this is what we all want: truth and life. But how is one to get to such a great possession, such a grand fortune?”[10]
Notice two things here. (1) According to Piper, Augustine should have said that what everyone wants is: “happiness”. But Augustine didn’t say that! Instead he said, “This is what we all want: truth and life.” (2) The second thing I want to point out here is that Augustine asked, “how is one to get to such a great possession”? Notice that Augustine said “possession” not passion! According to Piper it’s all about getting passion, getting the emotion of happiness. But Augustine says that man’s real desire is for the “possession” of true life: eternal life!
Augustine goes on:
“The philosophers have worked out for themselves ways that go wrong; some have said, ‘This way,’ others, ‘Not that way, but this one.’ They have missed the true way [not missed the emotion of happiness, but missed “the true way”], because God opposes the proud. We would also miss it, unless it had come to us. [What would we also miss? Happiness? No, not merely happiness but rather something infinitely greater, yea rather Someone infinitely greater!] That’s why the Lord says, I am the way (Jn 14:6). Lazy traveler, you didn’t want to come to the way; the way came to you. You were inquiring how you should go: I am the way; you were asking where you should go: I am the truth and the life. You won’t go wrong when you go to him, by him. This is the doctrine of the Christians; certainly not something to be set beside the doctrines of the philosophers, but to be set incomparably above them, whether the sordid one of the Epicureans [the hedonists of the apostle Paul’s day], or the arrogant one of the Stoics.”[11]
This last sentence by Augustine is especially interesting, because he contrasts the doctrine of Christianity with the pagan philosophies of Paul’s day: hedonism (the Epicureans) and stoicism (the Stoics). Augustine says that Christianity is “not” to be set beside these philosophies, but instead is “incomparably above them”! What does this say about the modern-day philosophy of “Christian Hedonism”? Does not the philosophy of “Christian Hedonism” set Christianity beside Hedonism (hence the name) and even worse: is it not a mixing of the light with the darkness? Rightly does the apostle Paul ask in 2 Corinthians 6:14: “what fellowship hath light with darkness”? In the Old Testament, the downfall of the nation of Israel was when it began to follow after the pagan religions of the nations around it, not always by completely abandoning their own religion—but by mixing the true with the false! (This is known as religious “syncretism”: the mixing of different religions, philosophies, or ideas.) Indeed, Aaron said of the golden calf which he made, “This is your god, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!” (Exod. 32:4). Did a pagan god bring Israel out of the land of Egypt? No! This was a mixing of the false with the true! Indeed, what does Aaron say? “Now when Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, ‘Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.’” (Exod. 32:5). To who? Not to some unknown or foreign god, but “to the LORD”! To Yahweh God! This was religious syncretism: the mixing of two different belief systems into one. More specifically, it was the idolatry of happiness, the idolatry of self-gratification or pleasure where God was exploited as a means to an end, that end being the pleasure of the worshiper. And it was all done under the guise of “worship” to the true God. Indeed, what do the Scriptures say? “The people got up early the next morning to sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings [i.e. Jewish religious sacrifices]. After this, they celebrated with feasting and drinking, and they indulged in pagan revelry” (Exod. 32:6, NLT). This was all part of their worship “to the LORD” (v. 5), not to some foreign or unknown deity! Yet who would deny that this was plain idolatry: we could call it “Jewish Hedonism”! Today we have adapted a similar kind of worship for the church and we call it “Christian Hedonism”. Religious syncretism, particularly religious hedonism, is still a snare for God’s people today.
So in answer to the question posed in the title of this post, “Was Augustine a ‘Christian Hedonist’?”, we must answer with an emphatic no, because he made a clear separation between Christianity and the secular philosophies of the ancient world, such as hedonism and stoicism. To repeat Augustine’s words, quoting the words of Jesus:
“You were inquiring how you should go: I am the way; you were asking where you should go: I am the truth and the life. You won’t go wrong when you go to him, by him. This is the doctrine of the Christians; certainly not something to be set beside the doctrines of the philosophers, but to be set incomparably above them, whether the sordid one of the Epicureans [the hedonists of the apostle Paul’s day], or the arrogant one of the Stoics.”[12]
The apostle Paul says: “Come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord!” (2 Cor. 6:17).
References:
[1] John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2011), p. 52, italics his.
[2] David C. Downing, The Most Reluctant Convert (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 134. The statement by Lewis is from his book Surprised By Joy, where he talks about the secular authors he used to read before he became a Christian. Lewis writes: “Shaw and Wells and Mill and Gibbon and Voltaire—all seemed a little thin; what as boys we called ‘tinny’. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them. They were all (especially Gibbon) entertaining; but hardly more. There seemed to be no depth in them. They were too simple. The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books.” (Lewis, Surprised By Joy, pp. 213-214.)
[3] Tom Stafford, “How liars create the ‘illusion of truth’” (October 26, 2016), BBC Future.
[4] John Burnaby, Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St. Augustine (London: Hodder, 1938), p. 46, ellipsis added.
[5] Henrik Lagerlund, Editor, Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy (London: Springer, 2011), p. 410, italics his.
[6] Notice what it says on the publisher's website: “In 1990, New City Press, in conjunction with the Augustinian Heritage Institute, began the project knows as The Works of Saint Augustine, A Translation for the 21st Century. The plan is to translate and publish all 132 works of Augustine of Hippo, his entire corpus, into modern English. This represents the first time in which the works of Saint Augustine will all be translated into English. Many existing translations were often archaic or faulty, and the scholarship was outdated. New City Press is proud to offer the best modern translations available. The Works of Saint Augustine, A Translation for the 21st Century will be translated into 49 published books. To date, the Complete Set includes 44 books containing 93 of Augustine's works. Augustine's writings are useful to anyone interested in patristics, church history, theology, and Western civilization.” (“The Works of Saint Augustine,” bold added. https://www.newcitypress.com/the-works-of-saint-augustine.html [accessed July 9, 2022].)
[7] Augustine, John E. Rotell, editor, translated by Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, Part III — Sermons (New Rochell, NY: New City Press, 1992), vol. 5, p. 31.
[8] Ibid., pp. 36-37.
[9] Ibid., p. 37.
[10] Ibid., p. 37.
[11] Ibid., p. 37.
[12] Ibid., p. 37.
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